Vague Terrain

Algorithmic composition is nothing new – John Cage and Iannis Xenaxis used mathematics and statistics in their earliest works. Brian Eno produced numerous compositions with SSEYO's Koan generative music system, which produces ambient variations for web-pages, mobile devices, and standalone performance. Autechre used algorithmic technique for their Confield and EP7 LPs, and the list goes on…

Often times algorithmic technique are utilized for experimental pieces, improvisational approaches towards classical, avant-garde music or jazz, but it is rare that computers are programmed to produce really funky music. Even more rare is it that the framework of a project is free (free as in freedom). This is the reason that I'm writing about a new musical work called Squeakyshoecore by Chris McCormick. Chris is a relentless programmer specialising in Open Source software, a Pure Data developer, he works for the portable "reactive music" project RjDj and developed, among other software, the PdLanParty – a client-server system for associating Pd patches with each other on a local network, and the more recent WebPd – a partial port of Pd to javascript audio (currently only in Firefox experimental).

Squeakyshoecore—McCormick's new album—features funky acid electronic beats composed by his machine using some patches developed in Pure Data. These patches will be soon released under a free software license. I won't discuss here the musicality of those pieces, neither I will elaborate on the specific algorithms he used, but I can assure you that these tracks have a real groove. It is also worth mentioning that Chris has already produced algorithmic hip-hop software and a drum'n'bass generator, both freely available on-line.

To get some more context on the project I caught up with Chris to discuss his recent work.

Marco Donnarumma: Chris why you chose a free software environment as framework for your projects?

Chris McCormick: My choice to use FLOSS was made after I discovered this new GNU/Linux system that was emerging in the 90s, and then I read about the GPL license and the writings by the creator Richard Stallman. Quite apart from the moral implications of that type of software, there are a number of practical, pragmatic reasons why using Free Software makes sense, especially for creative people:

• Obsolescence: what happens when the corporations or people that control the software you use to create art go bust? If you look at the history of computing, this actually happens with alarming regularity.
  Tons of data can potentially be lost. With Free Software you can always have access, completely legally, to the programs that you used to create your art and other works.
• Control: because you have the source code, and because of the open nature of FLOSS, you have much more control over it than you normally have with software. Say for example, that you didn't like the way a particular program does something. You could edit the source code, or get a friend to edit the source code, or pay someone to edit the source code, to work the way you want it to. You can completely customize the way your software works, and you can do this legally.
• Community and collaboration: This is one of the most attractive things about Free Software. The communities which spring up around particular projects and programs are often wonderful, helpful, and collaborative places to hang out. For example, the program that I used to make the software that makes the music in squeakyshoecore is called Pure Data. The Pure Data community is a great one, and people often post patches (the programs used to make sounds), music, and tips to the mailing list and forum. It's very newbie friendly, and one of the things that really made me stick with it was that an early post I made to the list was replied to by the maker of Pure Data himself (Miller S. Puckette). You usually don't get that type of down-to-earth friendliness with commercially developed projects.

You are invited to submit articles and artworks for a new issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac edited by FutureEverything. This is a dedicated edition of the leading online journal exploring the FutureEverything 2010 themes of the city and open data.

Deadline: Abstracts due 10 September 2010

ART OF PERVASIVE DATA

This issue of LEA will seek cross disciplinary thinking on art in the age of pervasive data.

LEA is soliciting texts and artworks by artists, researchers, and scholars
involved in the exploration of themes including:

• The networked city
• Data visualisation
• Open data
• Hyperlocal data and the interpretation of proximity
• Community use and generation of data
• Novel means of navigating the data terrain.

Cities today are vast repositories of information, endlessly collecting and archiving data. The growth and proliferation of databases and libraries that we access and update in the course of our every day lives, and new techniques of accessing, visualising and using that data, leads to new forms of representation and social interaction. The vast scale of these databases brings us to a tipping point, entering an era that is increasingly data-driven. This poses new challenges, such as the demands of making sense of a million different data sources, issues of provenance, interoperability, trust and accountability.

The potential for more innovative and novel interpretations of this landscape by creative invention, social innovation and scientific intervention is there to be explored.

The FutureEverything editorial group consists of Karen Gaskill, Drew Hemment, Michelle Hirschhorn, Michelle Kasprzak, Julian Tait and Kate Taylor.

See this link for more info on submitting.

For further information or images submission contact: Ozden.Sahin@leoalmanac.org

You are invited to submit articles and artworks for a new issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac edited by FutureEverything. This is a dedicated edition of the leading online journal exploring the FutureEverything 2010 themes of the city and open data.

Deadline: Abstracts due 10 September 2010

ART OF PERVASIVE DATA

This issue of LEA will seek cross disciplinary thinking on art in the age of pervasive data.

LEA is soliciting texts and artworks by artists, researchers, and scholars
involved in the exploration of themes including:

• The networked city
• Data visualisation
• Open data
• Hyperlocal data and the interpretation of proximity
• Community use and generation of data
• Novel means of navigating the data terrain.

Cities today are vast repositories of information, endlessly collecting and archiving data. The growth and proliferation of databases and libraries that we access and update in the course of our every day lives, and new techniques of accessing, visualising and using that data, leads to new forms of representation and social interaction. The vast scale of these databases brings us to a tipping point, entering an era that is increasingly data-driven. This poses new challenges, such as the demands of making sense of a million different data sources, issues of provenance, interoperability, trust and accountability.

The potential for more innovative and novel interpretations of this landscape by creative invention, social innovation and scientific intervention is there to be explored.

The FutureEverything editorial group consists of Karen Gaskill, Drew Hemment, Michelle Hirschhorn, Michelle Kasprzak, Julian Tait and Kate Taylor.

See this link for more info on submitting.

For further information or images submission contact: Ozden.Sahin@leoalmanac.org

Algorithmic composition is nothing new – John Cage and Iannis Xenaxis used mathematics and statistics in their earliest works. Brian Eno produced numerous compositions with SSEYO's Koan generative music system, which produces ambient variations for web-pages, mobile devices, and standalone performance. Autechre used algorithmic technique for their Confield and EP7 LPs, and the list goes on…

Often times algorithmic technique are utilized for experimental pieces, improvisational approaches towards classical, avant-garde music or jazz, but it is rare that computers are programmed to produce really funky music. Even more rare is it that the framework of a project is free (free as in freedom). This is the reason that I'm writing about a new musical work called Squeakyshoecore by Chris McCormick. Chris is a relentless programmer specialising in Open Source software, a Pure Data developer, he worked on the portable "reactive music" project RjDj and developed, among other software, the PdLanParty – a client-server system for associating Pd patches with each other on a local network, and the more recent WebPd – a partial port of Pd to javascript audio (currently only in Firefox experimental).

Squeakyshoecore—McCormick's new album—features funky acid electronic beats composed by his machine using some patches developed in Pure Data. These patches will be soon released under a free software license. I won't discuss here the musicality of those pieces, neither I will elaborate on the specific algorithms he used, but I can assure you that these tracks have a real groove. It is also worth mentioning that Chris has already produced algorithmic hip-hop software and a drum'n'bass generator, both freely available on-line.

To get some more context on the project I caught up with Chris to discuss his recent work.

Marco Donnarumma: Chris why you chose a free software environment as framework for your projects?

Chris McCormick: My choice to use FLOSS was made after I discovered this new GNU/Linux system that was emerging in the 90s, and then I read about the GPL license and the writings by the creator Richard Stallman. Quite apart from the moral implications of that type of software, there are a number of practical, pragmatic reasons why using Free Software makes sense, especially for creative people:

• Obsolescence: what happens when the corporations or people that control the software you use to create art go bust? If you look at the history of computing, this actually happens with alarming regularity.
  Tons of data can potentially be lost. With Free Software you can always have access, completely legally, to the programs that you used to create your art and other works.
• Control: because you have the source code, and because of the open nature of FLOSS, you have much more control over it than you normally have with software. Say for example, that you didn't like the way a particular program does something. You could edit the source code, or get a friend to edit the source code, or pay someone to edit the source code, to work the way you want it to. You can completely customize the way your software works, and you can do this legally.
• Community and collaboration: This is one of the most attractive things about Free Software. The communities which spring up around particular projects and programs are often wonderful, helpful, and collaborative places to hang out. For example, the program that I used to make the software that makes the music in squeakyshoecore is called Pure Data. The Pure Data community is a great one, and people often post patches (the programs used to make sounds), music, and tips to the mailing list and forum. It's very newbie friendly, and one of the things that really made me stick with it was that an early post I made to the list was replied to by the maker of Pure Data himself (Miller S. Puckette). You usually don't get that type of down-to-earth friendliness with commercially developed projects.

Our peer Markus Heckmann (aka Wüstenarchitekten) tipped me off about a recent project that I couldn't resist sharing. Markus describes his experiment (Wandler, embedded above) as: "a single frame of an animation captured on slidefilm with a generative animation running behind the slides." It is certainly hard to argue with the simplicity of the piece, which, like the underlying score (Monolake's "void") is both restrained and nuanced. If you like the 'hall of mirrors' feel of the piece, be sure to tune into Markus' Vimeo channel to view more of his work.

Trinity Square Video announces the next TSV Commission trilogy, LEFT, RIGHT, CENTER, a project that asks artists to create 5- to 7-minute videos using audio as a primary source material for the examination of contemporary political issues. Celebrating TSV’s 40-year history as a centre for the production and commissioning of art, we are looking for five successful proposals to the first portion of this trilogy: LEFT.

Videomakers chosen for LEFT must begin their projects from existing or previously self-created audio sources. These sources must be described in the project proposal and can include: audio interviews, self-recorded sounds, archival/historical audio material, music or appropriated sounds. (Music videos are NOT eligible for TSV Commissions.)

For LEFT, we are seeking proposals for the creation of work that considers the idea of “left” from various positions: from the egalitarian leftist or the undecided left-leaning; from a place of possible difference on the left-side or in leftfield; or from those remainders that haunt us–what is leftover, what is left unsaid or what has been left hanging.

This is a commission for the production of video art. TSV is seeking submissions that propose to explore pertinent issues related, but not limited, to representation, identity, geography and space, economics, justice, divisions of labour and power, science, history and philosophy. These works can be impassioned, critical or humorously self-effacing.

Proposed artworks can employ video through a variety of strategies, including narrative and documentary form, formalist or materialist practices, animation or compositing, and for the first time in TSV’s commissioning history, through a limited number of selected video installations.

Selected artists receive:

• $750 in production equipment rentals;
• 40 hours of editing time;
• TSV Final Cut Pro or After Effects workshop;
• Support from TSV’s technical and artistic Staff;
• TSV membership or renewal;
• $350 Honorarium;
• Public screening/exhibition (February 2011);
• Inclusion in the LEFT, RIGHT, CENTER catalogue (published at the completion of the trilogy)

While each project is created separately, the artists participate in group-critiques of works-in-progress, where they can receive peer-support and feedback.

Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of artist-peers and the TSV Programming Committee who will make selections based on the proposed project’s exploration of the theme, LEFT, as well as its intended examination, experimentation and expansion of video as an art medium.

All Toronto-based emerging and established visual artists, video artists, media artists, sound artists and filmmakers are welcome to submit proposals to LEFT. Proposals from those living outside Toronto and surrounding area must ensure that the artist will attend all LEFT related activities at their own expense.

Deadline: October 15, 2010

Proposals must include an application form available at www.trinitysquarevideo.com

This is the Meaford I know. Nestled quaintly on the Southern shore of Georgian Bay, Meaford for me means farming, it means my grandparents homestead, rolling hillsides, markets and lazy summer afternoons. It hadn’t (until recently) meant anything related to new media or electronic arts. That is, however, until I discovered Electric Eclectics (EE); festival of experimental music and sound art that has been taking place for the past five years over the August Long Weekend on a farm (The Funny Farm, owned by festival director Gordon Monahan) that overlooks Beaver Valley. Juxtaposing this bucolic rural scenery with a line up of avant-garde artists and crossover musicians that includes HEALTH, AIDS Wolf, DD/MM/YYYY, Let’s Paint TV; a midnight presentation of Tommy Wiseau’s film, “The Room” as well as installations by Andrew Harwood,Cinecycle,Marla Hlady and Christof Migone, EE seems like it will be an amazing mix of sounds and sights, a space to truly emerse yourself in the art and the outdoors.

There is something I really love about events like this that take place in smaller, less central locations. There is also something more to be said for festival organizers who take it upon themselves to start something new, to decide that instead of always venturing afar to experience the avant-garde that they will bring (or at least attempt to bring) these artists to them, in this case to their very own back yard, as Monahan decided to do for the first EE in 2006. This d-i-y approach may cost the event some of the slick production quality of other electronic arts extravaganzas, but with the philosophy of not only supporting artists who are adept at bending, crossing or completely redefining musical and artistic categories, but also exposing new communities to these types of artists, it is festivals like EE that seem like fresh pockets of creativity.

Both Monahan and EE co-director Chris Worden was in town last week for Bluesfest, where they had arranged, for the third year in a row, to co-present Electric Ecelctics satellite concerts, as previews for the festival proper. Certainly again, if you want to find an example of a festival attempting to expose new communities to electronic arts, I would label the EE performances at Bluesfest this year as nothing short of shear courageousness on the part of both festivals’ organizers. (They are in fact brothers…)

On the first Saturday of BF, I spent what I think was the hottest afternoon of the year watching Let’s Paint TV (who will perform in Meaford on Saturday night) play between musical sets on the Subway Stage. An internationally renowned YouTube phenomena, HIS NAME is probably the farthest thing away from the balls-to-the-wall, face melting, fifteen minute guitar solos that can tend to typify headliners at BF since it moved to Lebreton Flats. Let’s Paint TV’s act is fairly straight forward – accompanied by the sounds of a theramine, synth, drums and various percussive instruments – he runs on a treadmill, while making fresh blended drinks and painting. Yep, running, blending and painting! For the performance I saw, he attempted to capture the beauty of the Ottawa River stretching out beyond the festival site, while mixing a cocktail of bananas, apples and mangos. Spouting words of encouragement and inspiration on how to the audience could achieve their physical and creative potential – a Jimmy Stewart for the arts – Let’s Paint TV sweat it out three times that afternoon, to crowds that grew increasingly perplexed, if not down-right obnoxious. Of course, there were some die-hard fans who actually came to see him perform, but for the most part, he was met with gawks, guffaws and even jeering, especially from the lawn-chair crowd, who had arrived early to see WHO. I later found out that this was the first time EE had presented any of its performers on the outdoor stages. Admittedly, Let’s Paint TV is gimmicky; it is kitchy, random and at times, a bit of a gong show, which didn’t entirely translate onto such a large stage. It was, however, amazing to see a balding, suited man jog, juice and channel Jackson Pollock in 32º. I can see why Let’s Paint TV has garnered such a cult following, and if Ottawa wasn’t ready for it, maybe Meaford will be next weekend.

The second performance presented by EE at Bluesfest was a set by Nicolas Collins in the Barney Danson Theatre, the space where all the past EE presentations have taken place in. Cloistered away from the rest of the festival, the theatre is the ideal space for EE to present artists – most obviously for the fact that it can support the various types of electronics and audio-visual presentations that would not fair well on any of the outdoor stages. For better or for worse, it also shelters these performances from unassuming, potential audiences; anyone who wants to see these shows will seek them out, but few people happen upon them accidentally, which is a shame.

Collins, who will also be performing at EE on Saturday night, is the antithesis of Let’s Paint TV. A professor in the Department of Sound at the Art Institute of Chicago, the editor of Leonardo Music Journal and author of several books including Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardward Hacking (now in its second edition), he is an icon of the genre and an academic through and through. Taking the stage in loafers, and a beige blazer, he spent his first song seated nonchalantly behind his laptop, studying the screen as though reading or editing an article, thoughtfully and purposefully tapping a key or two at select intervals. His music is quite classic in the electronic sense, and includes song written entirely for skipping CDs, custom circuit compositions, electromagnetically manipulated instruments, as well as spoken word and orchestrations for musicians who imitate these digital noises. Coming from a generation of composers that includes Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma and David Tudor, Collins is entirely old-school, and watching him in the air conditioned comfort of the Barney Danson Theatre felt very much like seeing a lecture in a university classroom, one, of course, accompanied by a wall of sound and feedback!

The strength in these two performances was that they represented both sides of the spectrum of performances that will be showcased this weekend at Eletric Ecelctics. It was unfortunate that neither performance was very well attended, or altogether all that well received by the Bluesfest audience. It is also unfortunate that neither was ultimately as dynamic as what the rest of the EE line-up seems to be; however, I still hold out hope for the events this weekend, up on that rolling hillside in the Beaver Valley.

[Jeremy Bailey / Public Sculpture / 2009]

doing it for the lulz: The internet is bigger than ever. With consumption and production pushed into such close proximity, XPACE has asked Jeremy Bailey, ginger coons, and Jon Rafman to talk about the problems and possibilities of the internet.

More information at http://xpace.info/events_archive/doing-it-for-the-lulz

August 6th, 7pm
XPACE Cultural Centre
58 Ossington Avenue (north of Queen Street West)
Toronto

GLI.TC/H is an international gathering of noise & new media practitioners in Chicago from September 29 thru October 03, 2010.

GLI.TC/H is a physical and virtual assembly of artists, hackers,moshers, dirty mediators, noise makers, circuit benders, p/h/i/l/o/s/o/p/h/e/r/s, and those who find wonder in that which others call broken.

GLI.TC/H seeks: Realtime + time-based performances (audio/video), utilizing broken/bent technologies/strategies. Workshops, sharingknowledge of hardware/software hacking, cracking, breaking, kludging,piracy, & tool building. Artworks and Projects, artware, videos,games, films, tapes, code, interventions, screen-captures, systems,websites & installations. Texts, lectures, essays, code, articles and hypermedia.

Submission Deadline: 2010.08.20

Send an email to glitch@gli.tc link to your work, abstract, or other documentation. Please include a short explanation and your bio, let us know your geolocation and if you want to physically (or electronically) attend the conference. If applicable, send spatial, technical or temporal requirements for the project.

More info available at http://gli.tc/h

FABRICATE is an International Peer Reviewed Conference with supporting publication and exhibition to be held at The Building Centre in London from 15-16 April 2011. Discussing the progressive integration of digital design with manufacturing processes, and its impact on design and making in the 21st century, FABRICATE will bring together pioneers in design and making within architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, materials technology and computation. Discussion on key themes will include: how digital fabrication technologies are enabling new creative and construction opportunities, the difficult gap that exists between digital modeling and its realization, material performance and manipulation, off-site and on-site construction, interdisciplinary education, economic and sustainable contexts.

Call for Work: Central to the aim of FABRICATE is to interrogate and disseminate difference, similarity and innovation across design and making practices in industry and academia. Submissions will be independently blind reviewed by two members of an international panel of experts. Selected submissions will be featured in ‘FABRICATE: Making Digital Architecture’ published by Riverside Architectural Press.

Deadline: September 10th, 2010.

For more info on submitting work please see: fabricate2011.org/submissions

Editor's note: The following text and images are selected excerpts from Rosa's recent self-published PDF A Vernacular of File Formats: A Guide to Databend Compression Design. Be sure to check out the entire document and/or Rosa's workshops at the upcoming In/Out and GLI.TC/H events in New York City and Chicago in September.

'Glitches are hot; proof can be found on MTV, Flickr, in the club and in the bookstore. While the coffee table book Glitch: Designing Imperfection (2009) has introduced the glitch design aesthetic to the world of latte drinking designers, and Kanye West used glitches to sing about his imperfect love life, the awkward, shy and physically ugly celebrate under the header "Glitched: Nerdcore for life".'

Glitch has transformed from cool to hot. Its no more then a brightly colored bubblegum wrapper that doesn't ask for any involvement, or offers any stimulus. Inside I find gum that I keep chewing, hoping for some new explosion of good taste. But the more I chew, the less tasty / rubbery it gets. Glitch design fulfills an average, imperfect stereotype, a filter or commodity that echoes a "medium is the message" standard.

Above: Joint Photographic Experts Group (.JPG) (lossy), severely downsampled so that the 8x8 macroblocks (and quantization error) are apparent. (irreversible databend)

A JPG compression consists of 6 subsequent steps:

1. Color space transformation
2. Downsampling
3. Block splitting
4. Discrete cosine transform
5. Quantization
6. Entropy coding

Above: 8 × 8 DCT basis patterns of a JPG.

1. Initially, images have to be transformed from the RGB color space to another color space (called Y′CbCr), that consists of three components that are handled separately; the Y (luma or brightness) and the Cb and Cr values (chroma or color values, which are divided into hue and saturation).

2. Because the human eye doesnʼt perceives small differences within the Cb and Cr space very well, these elements are downsampled.

3. After the color space transformation, the image is split into tiles or macroblocks. Rectangular regions of the image that are transformed and encoded separately.

4. Next, a Discrete Cosine Transform (which works similar to the Fourier Transform function, exploited in datamoshing and macroblock studies) is used to create a frequency spectrum, to transform the 8×8 blocks to a combination of the 64 two-dimensional DCT basis functions or patterns (as differentiated by the red lines).

Above: high frequency mapping from which basic values are derived.

5. During the Quantization step, the highest brightness frequency variations become a base line (or 0-value), while small positive and negative frequency differentiations get a value, which take many fewer bits to represent.

Above: low res JPG, Baseline standard. (irreversible databend)

6. finally, entropy coding is applied. Entropy coding is a special form of lossless data compression that involves arranging the image components in a "zigzag" order. This allows the quantized coefficient table to be rewritten in a zigzag order to a sequence of frequencies. A run-length encoding (RLE) algorithm groups similar frequencies together and after that, via "Huffman coding" organizes what is left.

Because the RGB color values are described in such a complex algorithms, some random data replacement often results into dramatic discoloration and other effects.

Editor's note: The following text and images are selected excerpts from Rosa's recent self-published PDF A Vernacular of File Formats: A Guide to Databend Compression Design. Be sure to check out the entire document and/or Rosa's workshops at the upcoming In/Out and GLI.TC/H events in New York City and Chicago in September.

'Glitches are hot; proof can be found on MTV, Flickr, in the club and in the bookstore. While the coffee table book Glitch: Designing Imperfection (2009) has introduced the glitch design aesthetic to the world of latte drinking designers, and Kanye West used glitches to sing about his imperfect love life, the awkward, shy and physically ugly celebrate under the header "Glitched: Nerdcore for life".'

Glitch has transformed from cool to hot. Its no more then a brightly colored bubblegum wrapper that doesn't ask for any involvement, or offers any stimulus. Inside I find gum that I keep chewing, hoping for some new explosion of good taste. But the more I chew, the less tasty / rubbery it gets. Glitch design fulfills an average, imperfect stereotype, a filter or commodity that echoes a "medium is the message" standard.

Above: Joint Photographic Experts Group (.JPG) (lossy), severely downsampled so that the 8x8 macroblocks (and quantization error) are apparent. (irreversible databend)

A JPG compression consists of 6 subsequent steps:

1. Color space transformation
2. Downsampling
3. Block splitting
4. Discrete cosine transform
5. Quantization
6. Entropy coding

Above: 8 × 8 DCT basis patterns of a JPG.

1. Initially, images have to be transformed from the RGB color space to another color space (called Y′CbCr), that consists of three components that are handled separately; the Y (luma or brightness) and the Cb and Cr values (chroma or color values, which are divided into hue and saturation).

2. Because the human eye doesnʼt perceives small differences within the Cb and Cr space very well, these elements are downsampled.

3. After the color space transformation, the image is split into tiles or macroblocks. Rectangular regions of the image that are transformed and encoded separately.

4. Next, a Discrete Cosine Transform (which works similar to the Fourier Transform function, exploited in datamoshing and macroblock studies) is used to create a frequency spectrum, to transform the 8×8 blocks to a combination of the 64 two-dimensional DCT basis functions or patterns (as differentiated by the red lines).

Above: high frequency mapping from which basic values are derived.

5. During the Quantization step, the highest brightness frequency variations become a base line (or 0-value), while small positive and negative frequency differentiations get a value, which take many fewer bits to represent.

Above: low res JPG, Baseline standard. (irreversible databend)

6. finally, entropy coding is applied. Entropy coding is a special form of lossless data compression that involves arranging the image components in a "zigzag" order. This allows the quantized coefficient table to be rewritten in a zigzag order to a sequence of frequencies. A run-length encoding (RLE) algorithm groups similar frequencies together and after that, via "Huffman coding" organizes what is left.

Because the RGB color values are described in such a complex algorithms, some random data replacement often results into dramatic discoloration and other effects.

FABRICATE is an International Peer Reviewed Conference with supporting publication and exhibition to be held at The Building Centre in London from 15-16 April 2011. Discussing the progressive integration of digital design with manufacturing processes, and its impact on design and making in the 21st century, FABRICATE will bring together pioneers in design and making within architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, materials technology and computation. Discussion on key themes will include: how digital fabrication technologies are enabling new creative and construction opportunities, the difficult gap that exists between digital modeling and its realization, material performance and manipulation, off-site and on-site construction, interdisciplinary education, economic and sustainable contexts.

Call for Work: Central to the aim of FABRICATE is to interrogate and disseminate difference, similarity and innovation across design and making practices in industry and academia. Submissions will be independently blind reviewed by two members of an international panel of experts. Selected submissions will be featured in ‘FABRICATE: Making Digital Architecture’ published by Riverside Architectural Press.

Deadline: September 10th, 2010.

For more info on submitting work please see: fabricate2011.org/submissions

Vague Terrain has recently entered its fifth year of showcasing progressive, idiosyncratic digital art practices. Our growth is due in large part to the contributions of guest curators who have shared their expertise and energy with us, including Joshua Noble, Kim Cascone, Paul Prudence, Rob Cruickshank, CONT3XT.NET, Carrie Gates and David McCallum. We would like to continue to collaborate with members of the digital art community, and are inviting proposals from interested artists or curators to work with us on future issues of Vague Terrain.

Journal Format: The best way to get a sense of our project is to browse the archives. Each issue is a mix of essays, interviews, in-depth documentation of multimedia projects, broader surveys of art practices and EP-length audio art and experimental music releases. We aren't locked to a specific formula and have featured issues almost entirely dedicated to article-length essays or music. Each issue should feature 8-15 contributors.

Schedule: We are looking for guest curators for issues to be published in January 2011 and onward. A curator will need about 90 days of lead time to organize an issue and establishing communication with the invited artists at the beginning of the process is one of the most involved tasks. The guest curator will work with the Vague Terrain team to set up a timeline for participating artists to follow.

Responsibilities – A guest curator is responsible for the following:

• Writing an initial statement and using it to invite artists to participate in the issue
• Ensuring that participating artists understand our submission guidelines (we provide documentation)
• Ensuring that incoming submissions are approximately on schedule and complete
• Writing a forward to frame the issue theme and contextualize included work

Support – Vague Terrain offers the following assistance with the above duties of the curator:

• Provide documentation regarding submission guidelines
• Arrange for the proofreading and editing of content
• Organizing and publishing all the content that the curator has solicited
• An FTP account for the issue through which contributors can upload their work
• Once the issue is launched we will promote the material through various online art/media networks

Interested curators and digital artists should email us with the following:

• a brief abstract describing their proposed theme and how it relates to their research
• An artistic or scholarly CV or a link to a personal website
• Optional: a list of artists whose work would be representative of the proposed topic

Deadline: This is an open, ongoing call. However curators interested in the January slot should contact us ASAP as we'll be selecting the curator for that issue in early September.

Submissions and inquires should be sent to submit@vagueterrain.net

A few weeks ago we passed along an announcement regarding the FABRICATE conference that will be taking place in London next April. We just received word that (for various circumstances) the submission deadline has been extended through September 20th, so if you had been considering making a submission there is still lots of time. Check out the (updated) original announcement for information on the call for work.

The consistently excellent Motherboard.tv recently published the above feature on the most recent FutureEverything conference. The short video is a good overview of the portion of the 2010 festival that considered 'smart' cities and open data – Drew Hemment and Adam Greenfield offer some thoughtful insights and there are a number of interesting projects mentioned that are worth investigating.

We are excited to announce VT Audio Editions, a new venture that we've been working on for the last few months. Curated by VT audio art and music don Neil Wiernik, the project will program an ongoing series of releases that sit outside the standard EP and single format. Neil's concise mission statement for the project:

Focusing on the aural art genres that we have featured from the very start of our publication, VT Audio Editions invites artists to create a longer piece of audio/music content between 20 and 60 minutes in length. These submissions could be a composed work, a live studio session or a concert recording. Each Audio Edition will include a statement and biographic information on the participating artist.

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AudioPlayer.embed("mp3player_1", {soundFile: "http://vagueterrain.net/sites/default/files/audio/vtae01-matt-borghi.mp3"});

Our first release (embedded above) is by the Michigan-based composer Matt Borghi and it is a half-hour long, etherial, Lynchian soundscape with some fantastic sax work by Michael Teager. If this is an indication of the quality of the work that Neil will be programming, we're in for a treat.

Head over to the release page to download the piece and keep your eyes peeled on the VT Audio Editions page for future releases.

Broadcasting for Reels: Success Through Failure

Sometimes you can't do something right without doing it wrong. A mistake can be an unplanned act of genius. Getting hopelessly lost can set you on the right path.

Broadcasting For Reels is seeking works of audio art that address the idea of "Success Through Failure." Chosen entries will be aired on CKDU-FM in Halifax and distributed to community radio stations throughout Canada.

Broadcasting For Reels is an audio art project presented annually by the Centre for Art Tapes since 1993. The project accepts new audio work no more then one year old up to a maximum of 10 minutes in length. Works should be submitted as an audio CD or as a data file (wav, aiff or mp3) via email, web transfer or disc. Only those selected will be notified. If you would like your submission returned to you please include a self addressed, stamped envelope.

Deadline for submissions: October 1, 2010. Artist fees will be paid.

Send submission with current CV and artist statement to:

Centre for Art Tapes
5600 Sackville Street, Rm. 207
Halifax, NS B3J 1L2
cfat.communication@ns.sympatico.ca

For more information contact (902) 420-4002 or visit centreforarttapes.ca.

Don Miller, aka NO CARRIER, has just released a new, updated version of glitchNES. This is very exciting! For those not familiar with glitchNES, here's a brief introduction.

glitchNES is a custom-built Nintendo ROM that uses software tricks to create visual effects reminiscent of hardware glitches. Everyone who ever owned or played an original NES system should recognize these patterns, usually indicating that you need to hit the reset button and/or blow in the cartridge. Instead of remaining static, glitchNES encourages live manipulation of the imagery using a keyboard or external controller. Modifiable parameters include direction of movement, color, pattern, speed, and more.

Here are a few of my past experiments with v0.1.

Version 0.1 was a good start, but the concept is much more fully realized in v0.2. In particular, the live performance capability has been greatly increased. This was always the most exciting aspect of glitchNES to me, ever since I caught a video of Don Miller generating live visuals for a really crunchy electronica show, and I'm glad to see that he has continued developing with this in mind.

Version 0.2 doubles the number of controls (it now requires 2 controllers if you aren't using the qwerty keyboard), and adds more graphics banks which can be swapped on the fly. There is also a tap tempo function that allows for some rhythmic fluctuation of the imagery. As with the v0.1, the graphics banks may be edited using a tile editor to customize the resulting visuals. While I recommend this if you are planning to use glitchNES for a live show, I had a lot of fun just playing with the default banks that come pre-loaded.

Hardcore NES hackers can even buy some specialized hardware and create their own physical NES cartridge for use in an original system (works for NTSC anyhow). Everything you need for this process can be found at RetroZone.

glitchNES is available for free download here. After downloading, you need to run the compile.bat file to generate the ROM (glitchnes.nes). In order to use the ROM you will need to load it into an NES emulator. I recommend Nestopia or RockNES.

Enjoy!

Editor's note: Don Miller will be leading a short workshop on NES hacking as part of the GLI.TC/H festival in Chicago. This will be held at the Nightingale Theater on Saturday, October 2nd @ 5pm. Ben will be performing a live set alongside Evan Kühl at the same venue a few hours later. A full schedule and further details can be found at http://gli.tc/h

[Marius Watz / mid-progress plotter sketch]

Visual complexity isn't an inherent characteristic of generative techniques - it's easy, if not very interesting, to make a generative process that turns out visually simple results. So to some extent it's an aesthetic choice, or a tendency that pursues a certain aesthetic or sensual reward. Susanne Jaschko has called this its "retinal" tendency. Computational generative techniques act as an enabler or amplifier for that tendency - they automate complexity to a certain extent, or reduce its cost. If generative art is a cultural organism, then the "retinal" charge of visual complexity is a kind of lure that attracts both artists and audiences to computational techniques. – Mitchell Whitelaw

The above quote is culled from of a fantastic conversation between Leonardo Solaas, Marius Watz, Mitchell Whitelaw and Jeremy Levine on the topic of generative art and process-based work in Digimag 57. Read and enjoy the entire roundtable/article here